[R&F] Your first game of Rise and Fall?

Ok I did start playing with Wilhelmina and made it into the early Medieval era so far.
I decided to do a Fractal Map on Prince Difficulty.
Standard size with all 8 new civs. Chandragupta was excluded.

I started on a river between the coast and a large lake tile. I was excited for polders down the line. I also have Reyna and Pingala with two promotions so far.
First goody hut I was awarded a relic. I decided to at least get a religion going.
Met Seondeok to the west of me and Shaka to the south.
Shaka has stayed friendly with me after I gave him favorable gifts and trade, but still won't accept my friend request. Seondeok hated me at first after I forward settled her to claim the rest of the lake and for not getting science fast enough at first, then became friends right after her denouncement was over.
Founded Protestantism with reliquaries and meeting house and converted Seondeok. Shaka has his own religion, not sure if I should convert him.
Ended up finding good campus spots on a mountain range with a river running along it. Capital got +6 and other city got +7. Capital Theater Square has +4. Seondeok then became established friends with me.

"There are no two 'i's' but only one 'i' as we together are one."
Alexander the Great to one of his companions on why he spelled "hetairoi" that way on the road to Hellenize the known world without a ballista elephant, which would of made it so much easier.
Need a good laugh? Check this out: https://forums.civfanatics.com/media/albums/civ-6-leader-memes.173/
Also advocating for Mali and a Renaissance Era Pan-Italy for Civ 6.

First game is as Gilgamesh (surprisingly) on a Scrambled (I think) map. My neighbours are Mapuche, Poland, Kongo, Germany, and Greece (Pericles). My ultimate aim is for a science victory through ziggurats.

I experienced a golden age for both the Classical and Medieval eras, and nearly went into a dark age when we got into Renaissance but managed to avoid it by sheer luck in the last three turns. Germany tried to invade Brussels, the city state, but was overrun and is now probably the weakest of all the civs. Mapuche seem to have a grudge against me for reasons I don't understand, as they have declared wars against me twice now. Luckily, I am relatively far away and surrounded by mountains, therefore making it a hard walk for them to get to me. In addition, Mapuche didn't settle a new city until the Renaissance, which was weird.

So far, I stopped at the beginning of the 2nd Mapuche-Sumer war, so we'll see how it goes after that.

I will play as either the Cree or Georgia, I will try having fewer cities than I normally do (maybe 5) to get a feel for how viable that might be, and I will try to play a completely peaceful game (personal goal: no DOWs by or against me) with the aim of getting at least two of the highest level alliances.

Thought I would do a quick review of the above: I chose King and didn't manage to avoid any DOWs because Pedro was my neighbour and he was jealous of my great people, the bearded numpty.

However, I also had the delightful Robert the Bruce as a neighbour and I currently have four top level alliances!

I have five cities, absolutely no loyalty problems at all and a lot of gold. I haven't actually finished the game yet but I'm aiming for a science victory and I currently have the tech lead (just), so here's hoping. From this single experiment I would tentatively conclude that tall play is perfectly viable for those that prefer it! The government plaza and buildings are a great addition.

Had a great start close to the Eye of the Sahara and several lakes. Pretty beautiful landscape, too

I am in the Medieval Era now (normal age) after I got a Golden Age during Classic.

Very fun so far, I enjoyed exploring the world like never before because of a) the great Cree scouts and b) the consequences for the era score.

As I did not read too much before about what gives you era points and what doesn't it was also very fund figuring out what could work and what not. Due to two wonders that were finished shortly before the jump into Classic and a natural wonder I settled close to, I almost got another Golden Age after it looked for a while as if I would barely make a normal age. Really fun mechanic.

Loyality isn't as important in my game, yet. The Mongols are close to me, though separated by a narrow ocean canal. They tried to get a foothold on my continent and settled on both sides of my capital. The one that was farer away from their capital quickly joined my empire... the other one though seems to get enough pressure to stay Mongolian. Going to be interesting how this will play out in the later eras as I try to stay peaceful. Indonesia is relatively close to a city of mine that produces quite some loyality. Though so far her capital is strong enough to keep her other cities. She has now built a city directly at my border and put the Diplomat there... so this is going to be interesting. It seems like the AI can use the system there, too. To some extent at least.

Going for a cultural victory now and also have quite a big trade network going already, plus very good production in most of my cities. Really enjoying the Crees as I rarely felt that I could still switch the victory I am going for so "late" in the game.

I have a solid lead when it comes to points... though the Japanese religion could become a threat, as no other civ has a strong religion established (I ignored relegion other than founding a Pantheon and only the Mongols seem to try to spread their religion buit far less aggressively than the Japanese).

started stand all with scots, went very well even said here ai not to agressive now i am overwhelmed but horders of unit for free ex korean citys who spawn units at an alarming rate 4 on my border they just keep atacking lol, will loose this one

The northern outpost of Peepeekises, founded specifically to build the Amundsen-Scott research facility. Reyna turned out to be very helpful in purchasing both the Campus and Industrial Zone districts, funded by a deep pocket of 18,000 gold courtesy of Big Ben.

Spoiler:

The game ended with a Cree Golden Age and the rest of the world suffering through dark ages. I did not experience a dark age at all this game...might need to bump up a level to make it harder to build wonders, which significantly increase Era Score.

Spoiler:

Lautaro was my buddy for almost the entire game, ended with a level 3 alliance (cultural for most of the game, which really helped supercharge my race through the Civics tree). Also, the Flirtatious Agenda is not hard to overcome even if you're the wrong gender.

Spoiler:

I am disappointed that there is no Historical Moment for victories apparently...would be nice to cap off the Timeline.

Spoiler:

Throughout the game I built almost no military and relied pretty much exclusively on city-state levies to respond to military situations that my civil defense forces couldn't handle. I will certainly be trying this strategy again as it was tremendous fun and allowed me to devote almost 100% of my production towards infrastructure and wonders.

The late game is still rather tedious, at least when pursuing a peaceful science or cultural victory...I don't remember if there are any emergencies to counter either of those but if there are none triggered against me. However, I spiced things up by using Spec Ops armies and a city-state levy to utterly pillage some enemy lands after they declared war on me in what I assume was an attempt to prevent me winning.

Overall, I'm very, very happy with the new mechanics, but think I need to finally make the leap from King to Emperor as my last few games on King have been perhaps a bit too easy.

I'm playing as Cree
Continents, standard size/speed
AI Level: King (down 1 from my normal play level of Emperor)
Opopnents:
Gilga, Wilhelmina, Seondeok, Tamar, Shaka, Genghis and 2 randoms (turned out to be Poland and Aztec) If I recall I removed one slot from the list to give everyone some elbow room.

My normal play style is a peaceful atheist builder (without excessive chopping) but I usually cripple or wipe out the first AI that DoW's me. That's what happened here:

I started with a pair of Okihtcitaw (UU) early, replacing my normal early slinger start. I don't make scouts normally, at most 1 if i don't pop one early from a hut. I do wish that the Cree started with 1 UU instead of 1 warrior.

Starting locations on my home continent were nicely distributed. I was in the NW; Holland in the NE, Zulu in the center, Aztec in the SW and Gilgabro in the SE. There were 8 city states sprinkled throughout. I was on good relationships with all of them, until I forward settled Zulu. I used 1 Governor (Liang) to help with Loyalty in that city. I also used Amani to lock down Zanzibar. My 3rd Gov. was Pingala back in my capital to boost Science and Culture.

Zulu's DoWed me - so I proceeded to wipe out their army and took their capital and one other city. I then watched as one of their last 2 cities (which at this point was mostly surrounded by my loyal cities) flip to independence. I then captured their final city, and peacefully adopted the Free City. As a result I now control over 1/3 of my continent.

Ages so far: Normal followed by two Golden Ages (the first GA was easy to get with both an early UI and an early UU, but the second was much more challenging to get - especially with having such a high starting era score - I might not have made it if not for the +5 Era Score for wiping out the Zulu).

As things kind of settled down on my home continent, I was the first to make contact across the seas (I found a small coastal link with a galley). Eventually I got pulled into a City State Emergency over there. Even though I didn't think i'd do much i decided to join because 1, why turn down my first emergency, and 2 it was a chance to get visibility on the other continent and meet the last civs. Genghis and I had to liberate Kumasi from Korea. Poland declined to join in (their loss).

The only problem was that Kumasi was on the far side of Korea from Ghengis, but luckily near the coast on the side of the continent closest to me. Genghis tried, he really did, but he basically ran his army through a gauntlet of Korean cities to try to get to Kumasi and got most of his army wiped out. On the other hand, that meant Kumasi itself was almost completely unguarded when my naval invasion of Knights and Crossbowmen landed. Emergency successfully contained!

At this point (T-126) I am leading in every category but Religion (as normal, I don't have one). The World Era is Medieval, but I am solidly in the Renaissance era with both Culture and Tech. I have one Level 1 alliance w/ Gilgamesh - even with giving gifts and having positive diplo #'s with everyone but Korea, I can't get anyone else to declare friendship. My goal at this point is to TRY to get the 1 of every alliance Cree achievement and then fly off to Mars (with the help of a level 3 Pingala).

I am really enjoying all things Cree. Although I'm struggling to get as much value out of Poundmaker himself. I have only the one alliance so far, and the map hasn't given my much pasture or camp opportunities in this particular playthrough.

So far 2-thumbs up for the new content of R&F.

PS Game #2 is probably going to be Domination with either Shaka or Genghis, and at least Bobby, ChandraG, and the Teen Idol in the game.

Just finished my first full game (Random Leader - in the event, America; Shuffle; Huge; Immortal). R&F is a huge upgrade - for the first time in Civ VI I've actively had to plan ahead, especially for maximising era score and it's that - not loyalty directly - that turns out to be the real meat of the expansion. Thoughts on specific features and changes:

American UA: This is now extremely good (although ironically there's now a much wider suite of usable diplomatic policies, so I'll quite often take these with the wildcards anyway...)

Government district: These buildings seem highly variable in power and the 'production' line - while admittedly the only one I used - seems drastically more powerful than the others. Ancestral Hall would be good if it just gave the free builder, without the settler discount. The National Research Agency is a lot narrower but still extremely powerful, though it does make me wonder why the Manhattan Project/Operation Ivy don't use districts (either an Aerodrome or at least a Missile Silo improvement). With everything else unpacked it rather draws attention to the fact that you're testing nuclear weapons in your city centre... The associated tier 1 and 2 policy cards are pretty bad, but Democratic Legacy is absurdly broken. I found myself spamming food markets simply to try and grow my cities to the insanely high housing limits.

Loyalty: For most of the game loyalty is barely relevant, in the good way that housing is barely relevant (rather than the bad way that amenities are completely irrelevant): if you aren't worrying about it, it's a sign you're managing your cities well, and you periodically need to pay attention to ensure it doesn't become an issue. The AI seems reasonably capable of using the system, though its governors come and go from cities in peril more or less at random and it never, ever uses Amani to exert loyalty pressure. You want to be sure to avoid Dark Ages until your border cities are well-developed, since this is when loyalty issues can really hurt - and if you want to use it aggressively you want to avoid being in a Dark Age (and preferably get into a Golden Age) yourself. It's resulted in civs expanding in more natural shapes - the AI still forward settles and attacks city states deep inside other civs' territories, it just loses cities when it does. A human player can sequence expansion so that they're settling multiple cities simultaneously on a new continent, which provides each of them with a loyalty buffer, but the AI isn't capable of doing so.

On the flipside, when free cities eventually happen (and it's not common early in the game) the implementation isn't great. From my experience their default resistance to loyalty pressure - 10 at least on Immortal - is too high, as unless surrounded they'll simply remain free cities forever more where the described intent is that they would gradually shift ownership - even when that does happen it can take a very long time. Because free cities tend not to flip easily, it's quite common for multiple vulnerable Dark Age cities to flip and remain in place, whereupon they become basically unassailable by cultural pressure even from civs in a Golden Age as they exert a further +10 loyalty on other nearby free cities. There also seems to be a lot more back and forth in terms of modifiers than is explained by the tooltips - the Indonesian cities I was attempting to pressure kept going from -5 to +3 and back again apparently on the basis of changes in population pressure, though it wasn't clear where these were coming from. Also, I doubt loyalty will end up being hugely important for typical militaristic strategies, since ownership change happens much more quickly that way. Even if in practice it's not all that relevant it's one of the few things that engages the storytelling side of the game - much of my game revolved around trying to convert Palembang, as it was settled in a spot I wanted a turn before I get there but I didn't militarise or go to war with Indonesia.

The cleverest AI move I saw in the game - and I like to think it was a planned adaptation to the situation rather than the coincidence it probably was - was when Ternate was under pressure and Indonesia responded by conquering Hattusa, immediately to its south. This instantly provided Indonesian loyalty pressure from population - I had to actively foment unrest to cause the flip, and then it was still resistant to converting to the American cause.

Alliances: These are effective though not brilliantly-balanced (by the time you hit level 3 the GP points from cultural alliances outweigh basically anything else; before that stage research alliances are king). They appear to weigh too heavily in AI diplomacy - it now seems essentially impossible to lose an ally without actually going to war with them; however much you steal from them or ignore their promises, they'll agree to friendship the next time your alliance expires. The AI spends all its time allying, which means a lot of joint wars and most denunciations are the result of being an ally with an enemy - it's a bit too commonplace but at least it makes sense. If we weren't still saddled with random complaints about having Wonders from civs that refuse to build them, different governments, different sexes, low population etc. (fortunately most of the random agendas rolled in this game were sensible, though there's nothing to be done about the idiotic fixed agendas like Nubia's or China's) it would pose a real danger of ruining the complete lack of immersion in Civ VI diplomacy.

Verdict: Not the ideal way to treat the system, more a case of mitigating some of the worse elements of Civ VI diplomacy - a system that still has me pining for literally any other entry in the series.

Emergencies: These are exceptionally rare and the intended 'win the game' emergencies haven't spawned that I've seen. I've played two games - one to the Modern era and one to completion - and in both there was a single emergency in the entire game (both involving civs I didn't know, and both failing). Given that 'city state emergencies' are a thing and that AI aggression against city states has been ramped up so high that only 5 of the default 18 survived to the end of my game, the fact that they trigger so rarely seems to be a bug. Just as the victory screen came up I did briefly see a 'nuclear emergency' popup show, two turns after I'd nuked a Cree city.

Ages/era score: The rest ranges from nice additions at best to bandaids over flawed core systems (Alliances) at worst, and aside from the government districts the new buildings are entirely unnecessary - the water park is pointless, and in a game already nominally balanced around the available resource yields in the base game the neighbourhood buildings are just free stuff for no gameplay gain. So a lot rides on the era system, and fortunately it delivers - though, as with loyalty, I suspect only so long as you're willing to play along as the actual practical differences between eras aren't significant enough to warrant the effort I invested into planning out my era progression in advance.

The genius of the system is that, in addition to forcing you to plan ahead (most era score doesn't 'just happen', and dedications are very important) it involves most game systems in some way, including ones you'll rarely use otherwise. Wonders are less risky in general now due to both the production reimbursed for missing on them and the reduced AI tendency to spam them - on Immortal I got all but one of the important ones I aimed at, and could have got Oxford in time if I'd been quicker to sabotage Aachen's Hansa. Era score makes them actually important to pace through the game, since a +4 here or there to make up potential shortfalls or push you into a Golden Age can be vital. Great People and archaeologists are reliable ways to accumulate score at later game stages where it might otherwise be hard to get in sufficient quantity. Firaxis has also done a good job with their stated aim of getting civs to trigger Golden Ages through uniques when they were prominent in reality - all but one of my ages was a Normal Age, but my uniques got me a Golden Age in the Modern era (it helps that America has three uniques) - the caution there being that golden ages aren't as useful that late. I missed an earlier Golden Age by a single point because the district I'd planned to use for the final point apparently didn't count - it was an aqueduct.

Overall, I valued the era score to stay out of a Dark Age more highly than the bonuses from the Golden Age and it feels strange as a Civ veteran that ages have no intrinsic effect on your resource outputs (some Golden Age dedications boost them, and technically a Dark Age can lower them by reducing loyalty, but it's very unlikely a human player will suffer from the latter - a Dark Age allows a human player to exploit AI loyalty problems but the AI itself can't use loyalty offensively to any degree).

Governors: I like the governors and they also reward forward planning, but I've found only four of them useful and only situationally so in most cases. Magnus is an early-game powerhouse thanks mostly to the chopping, but seems to lose relevance relatively quickly (you always run out of things to chop...) The cardinal seems too restrictive in his design as he's the counterargument to Firaxis' claim that they didn't design the governors to be specialised for only one strategy. The Castellan probably just isn't useful since the human will rarely be defending against the AI past an early game rush that, if it happens, comes too early to bring him online. I've used Reyna in both of my games - once getting her early and once fairly late - and never really found a good point to use her. By the time you'd rather promote her than anyone else, money is rarely in short supply. The governor interface could also be better, ideally some way of allowing you to reassign more than one at once - if you assign one and displace another, the other has to then be manually reassigned.

AI changes: The AI seems to have changed for the better in some respects. It builds Wonders more rarely and more slowly, which will benefit it by not wasting resources on misses or on things it doesn't need, and there appears to be at least some strategy to most of its selections - though it still builds Petra with only a single flat desert tile. It builds many more units, and more ranged units, but its choice of support units seems random - too many supply trucks, and I saw an all-melee French force embarked complete with two observation balloons. Actual aggression during endless declared wars is rather rare, but at least the AI concentrates its armies around its own cities so it can put up a reasonably credible defence. It still doesn't build bombers or do anything with fighters other than occasionally deploy them as city defence.

It uses spies with more variety, but little strategy - I was impressed that my spaceport was taken out at one point, and other AIs I had secret access to twice lost theirs to AI missions (in both cases forcing my own to abort...), however the AI hit mine only once, delaying my moon landing. I never had any attempt made against it during Mars missions, to the extent that I stopped using the counterspy to focus on getting era score from the spy mission dedication. It neutralises governors, probably more often than warranted - I lost Pingala several times, who was probably fair game, and Magnus once when he wasn't really doing anything.

The best thing I noticed, however, is that the spaceport bug finally seems to have been fixed, and not just intermittently - two German spaceports were repaired during the course of that game.

Speaking of bugs - or at least annoyingly counterimmersive features - when will they fix the fact that when an AI offers you a deal and you refuse, they respond with a response giving their refusal?

Just finished my first full game (Random Leader - in the event, America; Shuffle; Huge; Immortal). R&F is a huge upgrade - for the first time in Civ VI I've actively had to plan ahead, especially for maximising era score and it's that - not loyalty directly - that turns out to be the real meat of the expansion. Thoughts on specific features and changes:

American UA: This is now extremely good (although ironically there's now a much wider suite of usable diplomatic policies, so I'll quite often take these with the wildcards anyway...)

Loyalty: For most of the game loyalty is barely relevant, in the good way that housing is barely relevant (rather than the bad way that amenities are completely irrelevant): if you aren't worrying about it, it's a sign you're managing your cities well, and you periodically need to pay attention to ensure it doesn't become an issue. The AI seems reasonably capable of using the system, though its governors come and go from cities in peril more or less at random and it never, ever uses Amani to exert loyalty pressure. You want to be sure to avoid Dark Ages until your border cities are well-developed, since this is when loyalty issues can really hurt - and if you want to use it aggressively you want to avoid being in a Dark Age (and preferably get into a Golden Age) yourself. It's resulted in civs expanding in more natural shapes - the AI still forward settles and attacks city states deep inside other civs' territories, it just loses cities when it does. A human player can sequence expansion so that they're settling multiple cities simultaneously on a new continent, which provides each of them with a loyalty buffer, but the AI isn't capable of doing so.

Click to expand...

If you start near Mongolia and there are horses nearby, I think you will find loyalty much more relevant in the early game. Maybe not so much if you have to take him out but otherwise.

1. Chandragupta. I ended up on a small continent or large island with Nubia and a bunch of city states. I forward settled Nubia to set up for the territorial conquest. Got few governors. Nubia conquered a city state and then surprise warred me while I was getting in the right spot. I liberated Hattusa. Got peace. Waited a bit to set up the Territorial War and did it, combined with the Warlords Throne. Seems pretty viable as Nubia was being wrecked, but I needed full governor support. Got golden ages through Medieval when I gave up.
2. Seondeok spawned on a lonely island. Ended up in a Dark Age. It probably would have turned around, but just fighting barbarians the whole time seemed a bit silly.

On Tamar now.

Click to expand...

I was playing Tamar with the goal of just stringing together Golden Ages. I managed to do that for six hours and won a religious victory. I kind of just forgot to stop.

The same is true with my Scottish game. I got so tied up into the Era System that I forgot to stop playing and won a Science Victory. My first completed game in the base was Brazil, which was one of the later games (I went chronological by leader). This is very addictive.

I played Mapuche through the Renaissance. I declared war on dark age Aztecs hoping to flip his cities without taking them. I didn't succeed because he didn't have enough units after the initial wave. He managed a heroic age after that, so I wasn't able to out-loyalty him. I was a bit disappointed in the mechanic, but the UU is pretty strong if you're expanding near your borders.

My first proper game was as Chandragupta on King. I initially invaded and destroyed the Dutch and spread out, meeting my borders with the Cree and the Mongols, who I had numerous border skirmishes with , over religion and a blatant attempt of Mongolia to build Petra right next to my attempt. These wars were ultimately fatal for the Cree. I ultimately failed after the Polish attacked me, and I spent far too much resources on trying to hold onto cities that kept flipping back, bankrupting myself via war wariness and a terrible deal to free my spy, causing chaos. I'll try another playthrough tomorrow, and give a go towards making a strong culture victory attempt, possibly as the dutch. I'll be a bit less gun ho, as I made many poor choices to try and explore the mechanics.

Loyalty system is fun and I liked the governors much more than I thought I would, but I still annoyingly had the AI spamming me every turn either insulting me or demanding uranium/luxuries etc. The AI also ate half of the city states which is rather sad still, left us competing very aggressively for the remainder. My best time was spent in a 40 odd turn war of attrition with the Mapuche, where they'd fortified an area of the map incredibly well, was really a lot of fun taking it out - the loyalty system meant that the final two Mapuche cities switched to me pretty soon after the end of the war which saved me some time!

Finally finished my first game. It's on the Achievements thread. I made some mistakes, but I was playing a low enough level it didn't matter. I completely forgot about buying Naturalists until late in the game. Genghis is pretty fun, but I'm having more fun in my current game as the Cree. Even though technically my Genghis game went better in terms of golden ages. Starting position helped a lot I think.